"Our high schools have stayed frozen in time," but the XQ Super School Project gives America the chance to reimagine them for the new economy.

Education is one of the topics that must be addressed by both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, because it is what many consider to be the “great equalizer” in America.

As many of NewsOne Now’s viewers know, Roland Martin and the University of Phoenix are committed to promoting initiatives that further academic achievement.

Martin caught up with Russlynn Ali, the CEO of the XQ Institute, to find out how her XQ Super Bus is taking the mission of rethinking high school on the road not only to educate, but to also inspire.

Ali explained the XQ Super Bus “was created to collect student voices and community testimonials from all around the country so that we could showcase the work of the ten thousand applicants that are building plans to transform high schools.”

Philanthropy News Digest reported that the XQ Institute, led by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, announced a $50 million competition in 2015 to redefine and reimagine what America’s high schools look like.

According to Ali, there are over fifty-nine occupations represented in the movement to transform our nation’s education system.

“High schools for a long time have been left unchanged in this country. In fact, we’ve gone from a Model-T to a Tesla … we’ve gone from a switchboard to a smartphone, and our high schools look exactly the same today as they did a hundred years ago,” Ali said.

She said the hundred-year-old high school model worked years ago because they were preparing for “factory lives in the industrial economy.”

“That has changed, but our high schools have stayed frozen in time.”

Ali later said, “What schools would need to look like in the new economy would come from communities, so we empower them, we launched this competition and provided them tools and resources to come together and redesign whole new institutions that will serve their young people better.”